Gods of Weymouth
by CalCurve
Summary: Jason and Pythagoras sabotage a king's witch-with-benefits. Well. They try to, anyway. (hurt!Pythagoras.)
1. Part I

Warnings: violence  
Spoilers: allusions to 1.10  
Time: pre-1.11  
Enjoy! Second half coming soon.

Gods of Weymouth

A thing missed: whiskey. Here wine is drunk like water, and tastes not much different from water; undiluted wine is the purview of northern savages, who guzzle it to induce madness.

Madness and Jason have become closer as of late.

Not missed: Facebook, his flatmate Mick (who was going to be an ex-flatmate if he clogged the toilet one more time), ties, online dating, exact-change-only buses. He does miss mobile phones: his and Pythagoras' lives would be much easier if Hercules could drunk-dial which tavern he needed rescuing from. (Also, Pythagoras and texting. He laughs at the image of Pythagoras holding an iPhone upside-down and asking, 'What is a lawl?' with that almost-alarmed curiosity of his.)

Also, taverns stink_. _So do people. And the bathhouse: he thought he was in for a spa. And it was, except waters are healing, so of course the first (and last, though he does suck it up and visit the frigidarium with the fountain) time he's soaking in the warmth, pre-realisation that, yuck, a hundred people have been in this not-chlorinated water before him, a man with what looks rather horrifically like blisters on his patchy skull climbs in while clutching a talisman to Hygeia. And Jason gets _out, _thankyouverymuch, because whatever caused that is most likely catching—and, ew, yeah, there are blisters on the man in places that are not his face.

Showers are high on his list of Missed Things. That, and Febreeze and toilet paper. And Tesco Value chicken tikka. And the microwave to cook it in. And Article 5 of the Declaration of Human Rights. The one that says, by the way, torture is not a valid method of interrogation.

* * *

This falls under the half of his misadventures not instigated by Hercules: Doe-eyed wife with split-skinned hands and a sickened husband, and he's cursed, she swears it, because the husband is a runaway slave from King Pelos of Thera next island over, and everyone knows that Pelos is sleeping with a witch. So won't he go and destroy whatever voodoo the witch-with-benefits is working on her escapee husband, so then maybe the curse might go away and this wife can stop twisting his heartstrings with her big brown eyes and work-dried skin?

Keen to reduce the number of infirm grossing up the baths, Jason says, 'Sure.'

Keen to state the obvious, Pythagoras says, 'You're mad. It's half a days' journey and you'll have to break into the palace of a king nearly as powerful as Minos.'

Jason is pouring winey water into a wineskin (made from a goat's stomach, but he has eaten haggis, so let's not judge). By now he can do this with a minimum sloshed over the lip. Licking the drops from his finger and stoppering it, he says, 'Don't forget the witch.'

'Yes. She will have the palace enchanted.'

'Will she turn me into a frog?'

Pythagoras is giving him the look of almost-alarmed curiosity. Fractals and triangles whirl about papyrus that has to be pinned flat with stones; curled scraps litter the surface and invade the bench and floor. 'Transformation is convoluted magic. Surely she would just choose some simple way to kill you?'

'Surely,' he says. He sighs, and tucks his bedroll (memory foam: how many millennia away is he?) under his arm. 'I guess I'll find out.'

He tromps down the steps and into the glare of Atlantis, and he revels in the saturated colour. Now, to the docks, where he can get passage to Thera with the exact silver the doe-eyed (and well-researched) wife gave him. Ever the gentlemen, he had opened his mouth to refuse, but then remembered that, oh, the money they don't have to spare isn't just his to squander on heroism, because let's face it, if Pythagoras misses one more meal he won't be visible from the side, and Hercules isn't going to cut back on his taverning to make up for Jason's little holiday.

'You don't think you're going alone, do you?' comes a voice close and clear in the hubbub, and Jason spins to see Pythagoras, vivid technicolour, with a goat stomach slung over a shoulder (muscle and collarbone form an acute triangle) and a striped blanket (stiff and itchy rug) tucked under an arm.

Jason grins. 'You're procrastinating.'

'I don't procrastinate,' he sniffs, pulling at the strap across his chest. 'Thoughts need to settle, sometimes, like wine.'

'How would you know?' he says. 'It's all watered down anyway.'

He tilts his head and blinks as if Jason were a rather curious specimen. 'Jason, sometimes I don't understand half the things you say.'

'That's mutual,' Jason says. Pythagoras makes a rocking half-step, misinterpreting banter as a sign of unwelcome, and Jason hooks a finger over the strap to tug him closer. 'Have you left a note for Hercules?'

'I doubt he'll be back until the turn of the week, but yes.'

'We'll need more silver for the ferry,' Jason realises.

Now _there's _a look, smile tilted askance to something wicked. 'Diocles will favour me a free journey.' Jason laughs into the bright blue-yellow world he finds himself heroing about in, and Pythagoras, a little crestfallen at his failed show of deviousness, sidesteps a woman with a basket on her head and brushes Jason's shoulder with his own.

* * *

Diocles waves Pythagoras onto the sailboat without a single word exchanged. Jason tries to follow in his shadow and gets an oar held to his throat.

He pays the wife's silver.

Dropping onto the bench next to Pythagoras, a risk what with all the pointy joints and rib edges liable to stab, he says, 'How—'

'It's a long story.' He tucks the bedroll under the bench and snags Jason's to do the same. Doubled over, he adds, 'Too long to bother recounting.'

'We're stuck on a boat,' Jason points out, eyeing the lethal ridge of spines jutting from Pythagoras' neck.

'I have equations to ponder,' Pythagoras says. 'I would not want your instinct for danger to put me behind my work.'

It's low but effective. Jason ponders their shared avoidance of backstories (and adds Dramamine to Missed Things) as the boat bobs across the bay, Pythagoras resting an elbow on the edge of the boat to peer into some unseen realm beneath the water.

* * *

Gladfreaked for his congenital gymnastics skills, Jason flips onto a parapet as he did on his first night months ago, then reaches an arm down to help Pythagoras scrabble up with rather less pizzazz. Now afternoon, they have left their supplies in scrub beyond sight of the palace and approached from the south slope, which drops forty-five degrees for defence.

'How,' Pythagoras gasps, clambering from the stone he toppled onto (and Jason, okay, maybe leapt away from all the flailing points), 'can you move like a Spartan but possess a wrist like seaweed?'

'What?' He senses insult; it takes a moment to connect, and in that time they creep to the door. Belatedly he defends, 'My swordsmanship has improved.'

'So has mine,' Pythagoras grumbles, peering through the keyhole. 'Through frequency of use, not regular training. There is no one on the other side.'

'We haven't been turned to ash yet,' he says. 'Maybe Pelos feels no threat.'

'Maybe.' It is profoundly unconvinced. He pushes the tab down and the door swings inward. A bit lighter on the scepticism: 'Maybe.' He flashes Jason a sun-glare grin (trig must really be giving him crap today) and says, 'After you, Great Hero of Atlantis.'

* * *

'I've figured it out,' Jason huffs, tucking into another niche. (What architect thought hidey-holes were a good idea in a palace?) Pythagoras spins a hundred eighty degrees, hands half-lifted, but there are no near niches and so he shuffles in, packing them nice and cosy, face-to-face and very stabbable.

He breathes, 'What?' and the word brushes the curls on Jason's forehead.

'This is a labyrinth. Thieves like us get lost and starve, and Pelos doesn't need to bother with guards.'

'You overestimate our skill,' Pythagoras says. 'This is the third time we've stopped in this alcove.'

'Second.'

Pythagoras frowns; he turns his head to look at the window cut from the opposite wall, now purpling, and Jason scrunches his nose so he doesn't sneeze at the tickle of hair. 'No, this is certainly the third.'

Jason sighs and drops his head onto the plaster behind. It is a pretty palace; he knows, having seen all of it at least twice (thrice). Walls are painted primaries: blue dolphins arc, and red schools of fish eye them, and yellow cityscapes cut idealised, sharp geometry that rather oddly reminds him of Pythagoras, who is straighter-than-life vertices and segments. Obscure parallels occur to him when wandering a palace painted like a crèche.

'I don't say this often,' Jason whispers, pressing his spine against the wall, 'but I think it's a good thing Hercules is off on a weekend bar crawl.'

Pythagoras' brows pinch a triangle above his nose. 'I don't know how crawling is good,' he says, 'but this palace is not designed for him.' He rolls his head to stare at the back wall that seaweed sways up from, and a question itches Jason's tongue—but backstories equal bad, yeah? Even if Pythagoras does deign to answer, gods forbid he ask for something in return.

'There are hidden rooms here,' Pythagoras murmurs, and Jason seizes the distraction from the sort of acidy regret of their bone-strong but also, sometimes, fleshless friendship.

'How can you tell?'

'These alcoves. There are no doors to account for the space behind the walls.' He raps knuckles on the wall behind him in point. 'The courtyard is too small and the halls too narrow.'

The seaweed sinuates like spines. Pythagoras' foot is braced between Jason's. Jason says, 'Round three?'

'Four.' Pythagoras sighs. 'Triangles are much simpler companions.' In the dimming day, he rests the heel of a hand under Jason's collarbone so he slides out without collision. The vestige of his sanity suggests separating, since they have established the shocking lack of guards. It does not take two to shatter a clay model, or burn some weird-stinking herb bundle, or tip a bowl of rooster colons, or whatever creepy crap witches-with-benefits use to punish runaway slaves and their doe-eyed wives. Jason ignores this.

* * *

Pythagoras trips over Jason's foot when they fold into another niche (a noblewoman and her servants glide by, oblivious in their natter) and slams a hand into a frolicking dolphin that sinks into the wall which is not exactly a wall after all. It swings in, and Jason, holding Pythagoras around his stomach, says into the black passage, 'Huh.'

Pythagoras regains his footing and shakes out his hand. He frowns, but they can distinguish nothing with the sky all but inked.

They have to walk single-file into the witchy lair. Or at least it looks like a witchy lair. Thing is, there four bowls of smelly gut-stuff, and a shelf of clay figures, and rafters full of bundled plants, and Jason's pretty sure that black flutter in the corner of his eye is a bat and not imagined, but he won't swear on much of anything anymore. There are no cavorting sea creatures on the water-stained plaster. Also, a woman is dunking a clay head into a bowl of blood (or it sure as hell looks like blood in torchglow). Her plaited hair pendulums where her bottom ribs wing, then she turns her head.

They kind of stare at each other in surprise, the head submerged to its chin. (Hope no one's drowning.) Another something flits not-quite-in-sight. There's a sword at his hip, but Jason figures this is not the best time for swords, so he squawks, 'Hello.'

'Sorry to interrupt.' Pythagoras' voice constricts like he's swallowed vinegar. 'We'll just let ourselves out.'

'There is no need.' It is deep, and the woman's lips do not move; it takes Jason a second to turn and see the slick-headed, cross-armed man spanned wider than the doorway.

* * *

Jason discovers that oh, what do you know, he can cartwheel with _no hands _and kick a spear from a guard's grip upside-down. Pythagoras slops rooster guts into another's face and slams the bowl onto his skull; he says, 'Now you're showing off.'

Jason wings a smile and leaps onto a back, yanks hair and rips the spear from fingers. This continues to their advantage, as only one man can charge through the doorway at a time, and destruction of pottery and spilling of bowls and trampling of herbs is the point of this whole misadventure, so really the guards are doing them a favour.

A big, walloping favour that ends with Jason's head ringing bells when he's somersaulted to the floor and Pythagoras' arms raised in a trident surrender with a stickable thing pointed at organs better off inside his skin.

Things go a bit pear-shaped from here.

Jason backs against the wall, sword taken, with a trident at his throat. He stares cross-eyed, and though it's one shade above pitch in the torchlight, the prongs are flaking, used and uncleaned. The bells are falling away to leave vibrating pain at his right temple, but it's of the ouch-that's-gonna-bruise variety, not the ouch-that's-gonna-haemorrhage variety.

Pythagoras is herded to the opposite wall, small of his back hitting the wooden workbench and his torso bending over and away from a spear at his heart. In the dim his eyes irradiate blue.

'You are not a common thief,' Pelos notes, stepping up beside the trident-holding guard and meeting Jason's eyes. 'No thief fights like you.'

Jason swallows, middle prong scraping his throat. Six men sprawl the floor, including Pythagoras' victim, and the one sending Jason narrow-eyed death-wishes from the other end of the trident got a bowl of octopus ink to the face.

'What is your purpose here?' Pelos asks. 'To kidnap Medea for your own ends?' The witch huddles in the doorway, picking bits of entrails from her petrol hair with blood-rusted fingers. Now she sidles out, lifting a bowl from the ground and frowning rather like a mother surveying a child-destroyed room.

Jason says, 'We wish no one harm.'

'To obtain a service from her, then.' Pelos taps his chin. 'You would hardly need to go to such lengths, a god-touched man like yourself. No, then. To destroy her protections, and leave me vulnerable.' He nods and turns away.

'No!' Jason gasps more air than voice. 'I said we wish no harm.'

There is a small table against a wall; it rattles and screeches, curling Jason's toes in his sandals, when Pelos drags it to the centre of the room. Jason looks up from it and is caught at Pythagoras. He is spattered red from wrists to elbows and a print smears his shirt at the left ribcage.

'If that is true,' Pelos says, 'then why are six of my men incapacitated?'

'They had weapons,' Jason says. 'Sharp weapons. And they were running and yelling at us.'

Pelos' face cannot be analysed in the dim between them. Medea collects sherds in the bowl. His words are flat: 'Who are you?'

'Jason,' he says. 'I am of no consequence.'

Pelos snaps his fingers at spear-guard, and then—flailing, and Pythagoras snaps, 'Hey!' and gets a _woompf _to the gut that doubles him over airless, then his hand is splayed into a starfish on the table and Jason's got an arm hooked around his throat and the trident to his back pinning him humming still.

'Move,' the guard rasps hot and oniony (toothbrushes, they're not complicated) into his ear. 'Please, move again so that I may rip your spine from your back.'

'You are far from inconsequential,' Pelos says, eyeing the bronze and bone tools jumbled across the workbench Pythagoras has been dragged from. 'Not least, you have ruined the better part of Medea's work.'

'Sorry about that,' Pythagoras wheezes, hunched and tugging at the hand clamped so tight around his wrist he cannot slide his fingers together. 'But this really isn't necessary.'

'You have fought better than any I have ever seen,' Pelos continues, and scrapes a bronze-head mallet from the table. Pythagoras cannot see behind, but Jason's expression widens his eyes and quickens the rise-fall of his shoulders. Jason shakes his head and flickers a grin; Pythagoras scowls and pointedly pulls at his arm, unappeased.

'Tell me who you are,' Pelos says, wandering to the side of the table and into Pythagoras' sight—and his skin goes glowy in the dark, like a ghost, and the vertex of his Adam's apple leaps and plummets.

'I'm Jason,' he says, 'I've told you that.'

'Jason of where?' He could be small-chatting at a pub for all the concern in his voice.

'Jason—Jason of Weymouth,' he babbles, missing pubs and now he really, really, means it when he says he needs an undiluted drink. Whiskey. He'll invent it, when they survive this. Medea relights a brazier, and they blink in bonfire reds.

'Weymouth. It is unfamiliar to me, and I'm an educated man.'

Pythagoras rolls his eyes. His fingertips look a bit purple.

'It is not… of the Aegean world,' Jason fumbles. 'It is north.'

'Paionia is north.'

'And north of Paionia?' Pythagoras asks, eyes glued to Jason and pointedly not the hammer spinning a perfect, lazy circumference half a metre away.

Pelos hums admittance. 'Jason, hero of the north. Tell me, do all Weymouth men fight like you?'

'When they feel the need.'

'Do they run like you?'

'Quicker,' he says, because talking so far equates to fingers remaining attached to hands.

'Do they share your immunity to our gods?' he asks.

'I suppose they would,' he says, though he hasn't the foggiest idea what's going on at this point, and hell, Pythagoras is beginning to look intrigued. And since he's in for it all, he adds, 'We've, uh, been promised protection by the fierce gods… god Dorset. Even abroad. And we're all mad warriors; we drink wine straight.'

'Fierce indeed.' The flicker at the corner of his mouth does not match the white spots blotted over his pupils. He says, 'You, then, are no Weymouthian,' and casts a glance at Pythagoras, who carries shadows in the channels above his collarbones and has ink on his fingers. A side-glance at Jason, then Pelos zeroes back on Pythagoras, who bends a little lower. 'Who sent you?'

'Um,' he says, overarching his fingers off the table. The clamp around his wrist tightens; Jason knows by the lengthened creases from the corners of his eyes. 'Um.'

'Most erudite,' Pelos says, and spins the hammer.

Pythagoras fish-gobs a couple times, then manages, 'We have come to remove a curse. That is all. Not an important one—I mean, to you.'

Medea's voice is bitter, sherds piled in her arms and hair dark-haloing her face. 'They've destroyed more than petty curses.'

'Your warrior, Jason of Weymouth,' Pelos says. 'I would be willing to trade your freedom for his servitude, if you could assure me that he is not already in bondage to another king.'

Pythagoras' lips seal into a line, and he flares breath. Fear not quite cut from his eyes so they glint sharp, he scorns, 'You are a fool who leaches others' power.'

The guard drags the far two fingers to the side, leaving the index and middle spread. They are splotched black. Pythagoras, shoulders twisted oblique to accommodate the lost height from his pinned hand, snaps, 'Really? Must it be the right? It is inconvenient.'

'We will leave!' Jason cries. 'We will leave with the freedom we came with, and in return you will be lucky to never witness Weymouth or its gods.'

Medea scoffs. 'Let me turn them into frogs, Pelos. That would be far more entertaining than their current spineless forms.'

Pelos hums consideration. He says, 'Inconvenient and unbalanced.' A moment and there are two hands pinned to the table, forcing Pythagoras to bow, and his brittle rage fragments and he says, 'No no no, that was not the intended solution.' The guard leans to put weight on the wrists, but despite the partial view, Jason sees Pythagoras' arms, pulled obtuse, shivering in unfelt cold.

'Let him go,' Jason says. 'I will—'

'Gods help me, Jason, if you try to sacrifice yourself!' It would be fierce an octave lower. His shoulders peak small. Jason snags on his stare, and his surrender falters into pleas: they need _out,_ and he will build a shrine to Dorset, he swears it, he'll start a bloody cult in His honour—this isn't happening, it isn't—just get the hell out with his friend restored, and—

'You promise retribution for crimes I have not yet committed,' Pelos says. Half a metre away, there is one more arc then a plummeted tangent and Jason can't, his eyes flinch shut and there's no time to repair his cowardice or shout and

_bang_snap

slams his heart off-rhythm

and Pythagoras cries hoarse and chokes silent after two quicklong seconds on air-stealing shock.

Jason lurches from the trident shouting, 'Pythag—' but the arm gags and yanks him back, and it is too late, Pythagoras' face is hidden in an arm and his knees are buckled to the floor and his hands are still clamped to the table in prayer so all Jason sees are hypotenuses of scapulae falling-up-falling in failed flight.

Pelos says, 'I would see them come to my gates, these gods and warriors, and claim them for my own.'

An exhale carries a thin keen.

Pelos raises the hammer to the top of a freefall curve.


	2. Part II

Pelos raises the hammer to the top of a freefall curve. White flickers in Jason's head; it blinds and his foot has kicked a knee and someone roars in his ear and _how dare they _protest—He froths unfinished curses, words that don't catch on air through his nose so they runt faint (this isn't _happening_); he hooks acutely mortal breaths and

_bang_snap

and Pythagoras hasn't air to scream and Pelos says, 'I will continue, Jason, until you submit your freedom—' then there's a trident flaking gore in his hands and he clobbers the guard with the flat of it and spins and with the shaft strikes Pelos in the throat and Medea squeaks and he spits something ugly, Pelos is gawping like a beached-bellied fish and trident-guard's half-opened his eyes from the floor and Medea vanishes in a puff of smoke or as a bat for all he knows and that leaves the guard who has Jason's sword but until now grasped prismatic wrists, had touched—His face is wide enough for two of the prongs to pierce and Jason shoves to topple him _away, _and he's left heaving with fresh-bright blood and none of it none-at-all veils him from the whimper and the head bowed from green-wood splintered bone—Pelos growls from behind and Jason turns unarmed but there's death in his eyes and_ I will show you what you have brought upon yourself—_

A hammer soars spiralling past Pelos and dents plaster.

'Damn,' says Pythagoras.

Jason rips the sword from the stabbed guard's hand. Pliers ring off Pelos' head and stagger him, then Pythagoras shouts, 'Jason!' and he stumbles, senses scattering from their hypercharge.

He is holding a sword before a king. Bodies cover more floor than not. Pythagoras has lobbed stuff and is saying, 'Jason, _enough._ You are no tyrant!' The world reeks.

Bloody hell, he thinks, but fights tidal horror for this: he hoists the hammer from the floor and bursts a nova into Pelos' temple.

* * *

No really, everything reeks. Jason lifts a wrist to his nose, and lights drag trails as he revolves to Pythagoras, impossible lines stretched to rays and blue in a world painted fire. His arm is bent acute, vertex at his navel and clutched mid-humerus, hand against the front of his shoulder. His fingers, middle and index, ruin parallelism.

'Jay-sonn,' drawls pitch, 'Are you oh-kay?'

Jason's grip slackens and the hammer gongs atonal.

Pythagoras takes a step then half-steps back, and his shape lags. 'Herbs have be-en caught in the bray-zier; they are dis…' Things smear into art, and time squishes and pulls…

Mick's got a phalanx of empty beers at his feet, the football match dragged into overtime. Jason puts his bloody hands on his be-tunicked hips and says, 'Mate, you've got to do something about the loo.' (Fish flicker. This way.)

Mick pops a cap and it falls into rank. The TV glares off his black-line glasses. (Fingertips on a shoulder nudge him left.) 'Don't preach. You've got the dead goat stinking up the room.'

'That wasn't me,' Jason says. (From a window, cuts of stars. Beside, a line of warmth.) His sandals have tracked sand and gore across the tile. 'I was cursed.'

'That's what they all say,' Mick says. Lately he's into green skinny trousers and sweaters with owls knit on them. Crowds rage from the telly. 'Foul!'

(Seaweed ripples.) 'I'm not,' Jason says. He picks at the ties of his breastplate. 'You got any chicken tikka? I'm starved.' (Please don't. Don't. Stop, please. I am sorry.)

'No. You killed a hundred chickens the other day, though. The police are coming.'

Jason sighs. (Jason? Jason?) 'The stolen bread?'

'Carrying an unconcealed sword into Tesco.' (A city burns in torchlight.)

Pythagoras steps from the kitchen and crosses his arms at Jason. 'What are you doing here?'

'I wanted chicken tikka,' Jason says. (Jason says, Don't cry. A voice says, We see ghosts. Keep going. We see ghosts.)

Cheap light casts him skeletal: filigree clavicles, ridged sternum, nob carpals. Skin furrows between radius and ulna. Pythagoras sighs with the gravity of the wise and declares, 'The time for tikka has passed.'

'You can't come back,' Mick says. 'I've kicked you out for breaking my fingers.' He switches to _Dancing with the Stars. _'Also, quit drinking your wine straight. Turns you homicidal.'

'I'm not.'(Hush, friend. Someone is coming.)

The room: couch, telly stacked on cinderblocks, Argos lamp in a corner, diving gear piled blue-and-yellow. Pythagoras crosses, metatarsals fanned beneath sandal straps, and fills Jason's view. A grey window sits over his right shoulder.

Navy threads radiate from Pythagoras' pupils. To them, Jason begs, 'I'm not.'

'Jason,' he says. 'Sit still and don't speak.' …He is folded on the ground, and Pythagoras' calves are streaked with rust.

She slimes honey: 'Jason, leader of heroes.'

'Oh, for the gods' _sake,' _exclaims Pythagoras, and Jason sucks in night with a great _whoop_. He huddles in an alcove behind Pythagoras, who blocks the entrance and points Jason's sword left-handed. In the hall, Medea frazzles static, rhomboid tattoos tessellating down her arm. Pythagoras grouses, 'He's leader of only imaginary heroes, thanks to your rotten incense.' He waves the blade. 'Shoo.'

Her olive-pit eyes drop to Jason's. He lifts a hand raw from battering people with wood and metal implements. 'Hi.'

'Jason,' Pythagoras says, not turning, 'don't be nice to witches.'

'You may have destroyed my work, but I can still turn you into a frog.'

'Ribbit.' Jason smiles as he waggles his fingers.

'Your mind is clear,' she says. 'You cannot fool me.'

His smile evaporates, and he springs up. In the goldlit hall, he takes the sword from Pythagoras' shaking hand and spins it once; Pythagoras side-hops.

'You heard him,' Jason says. 'Shoo.'

She smirks and pulls a clay figure from her purple dress. The seal of Pelos, two circling dolphins, is stamped on its chest.

Jason's jaw winds into an aching clamp.

'Aw, come on,' Pythagoras says. 'That's just not fair.'

'Your quest is incomplete.' She steps nearer, and Jason extends the sword to prick her sternum. Halted but unfazed, she says, 'I will give it to you.'

'Don't take it,' Pythagoras says.

'Will it turn me into a frog?'

'It could.'

She says, 'It would be far less trouble to kill you. This is a token of my goodwill.'

Jason takes the shabti. He does not die or turn green.

'I have no patience for your goodwill.' He slams the figure into stone and it shatters four ways. He pushes, and she backs at the point of pain. His teeth bare. 'Go worm your way into some other fool's affections.'

Torchlight flares in her pupils.

'Jason,' Pythagoras says, 'don't be rude to witches.'

'You would reject the Fates themselves,' she snarls. Lights waver, but her eyes gleam.

'I reject anyone,' he says, 'who keeps us here a moment longer.' Another prod, and static climbs his arm, raising hair; he advances, and though she hums electricity, and behind a torch snuffs out, she backs without drawn blood.

'I know your past,' she says as they walk, gold spilling over into irises, 'as I know your future. You dare not disregard me.'

He says, 'I dare.'

She says, 'You come from another world.'

He says, 'It doesn't matter.'

She says, 'You will beg for my help.'

He says, 'I don't care.'

She says, 'You will drown Atlantis and everyone in it.'

He lunges and shock seizes his hand to the hilt and fire sears his vision and heart-lungs burst

and then he's on his knees, sword crackling blue sparks on the floor, every torch choked and Pythagoras' shadow kneels lop-sided before him. 'Jason,' he calls. 'Jason, you great fool, are you okay—'

'Pythagoras,' he says, blinking gold discs. They fade. 'Pythagoras.' In the grey, his friend reaches for his upper arm and flinches from the static shock.

'Ow,' Pythagoras says. His other arm is still folded against his chest, and Jason gasps from sick precipitating out from his gut and, _hell,_ guilt.

His hands suspend on either side, a moment, before curling around the verticals above Pythagoras' pelvis, not firm enough to pull. Their kneecaps bump. He says, 'This was not a great idea.'

Pythagoras huffs, then he's giggling, but high like a mistuned bell and his sides hitch against Jason's thumbs, and then his head falls to Jason's shoulder and he's wheezing irregular pulls of air, torso tipped forty-five degrees, and Jason wants to do something but he can't open his mouth. Vomit and apologies are building pressure to froth over. Sorrys and I-wish-it-was-mes and disgraceful appeasements—

'You look like a miserable nightmare,' Pythagoras muffles into his shoulder.

The nausea settles a little, and he uncurls a hand to pick a chunk of rooster from Pythagoras' hair. 'So says you.'

A puff of humour on his clavicle. Air grates down his throat. 'You smell like one too.'

Quiet softens the black, and Pythagoras' forehead warms his shoulder. Jason swallows something foul and forces, 'We should keep going.'

He is summoning the cruelty to repeat himself when Pythagoras pulls breath and lifts his head, blinking. 'Sorry,' he breathes.

'It's okay,' he says, and shuts his eyes in shame. Pythagoras hunches from his hold to stand. 'Wait. Stop.' He kneels, then pulls Pythagoras up with him. It jostles: breathing stalls into a vacuum.

Sorrysorrysorry—Pythagoras scrapes air harsh as sand. Jason reaches towards the small of his back, then retracts. They walk with a hand of silence between.

* * *

The sea has retreated, abandoning knots of seaweed across steel sand. Jason, ripping strips from his shirt hem, unleashes a torrent of stories about childhood fractures and sprains and bruises, and Pythagoras' eyes shine colourless.

(They slipped out the ground floor, because Pythagoras could not manage the wall they entered by, and Jason grabbed their packs on the way.)

Jason has torn all he can without turning into a belly dancer. He wanders the damp beach in search of driftwood to use as a splint, sidestepping dead jellies. The moon cuts a sabre. He finds a plank from a long-drowned ship and splits a splinter; _snap _and he drops it as if shocked.

He returns to find Pythagoras curled into a crescent, breaths knocked unstable.

Jason drops and says, 'What's wrong? What happ—'

Pythagoras whispers, 'I've set them. Could you, could, tie—' He swallows, looks down to water sharp as diamond. 'Oh.' His eyes shut.

Jason's hands float useless. Pythagoras clutches his right arm above the wrist. Middle and index: straight and bloated. 'Gods, Pythagoras. Why didn't you _wait_?'

He mumbles, 'It would have upset you.'

Jason cinches fabric (far less than he tore), each tug throwing Pythagoras' lungs. He's babbling again about the neighbour's dog and sledding down the stairs and getting lost with outdated trail maps…

After, he walks straight to the ocean, hopping over seaweed, and ploughs to his chest in tepid water. He sinks to his knees; the sea is a black and silent weight. He digs his fingers and toes into the silt. Heat grows slowly under his ribs.

* * *

He wades from the water not so stinking, and Pythagoras is standing near the edge. Jason cannot see the navy lines in his eyes.

'Are you okay?' Pythagoras asks, voice lucid.

'I'm not the one injured.'

He extends a toe to prod Jason's shin. 'Jason,' he chides. 'You are not yourself.'

The holes of their eyes fall to each other. 'You broke the curse,' Pythagoras says. 'You saved a man's life.'

'You are _hurt.' _

'I will heal.' He steps into the water and swings his legs, washing away the mess to his knees. 'It is far less a problem than if you had gotten yourself enslaved.' He huffs. 'Honestly, Jason, you think I would have preferred that?'

'I would have,' Jason says. 'Here.' He hooks Pythagoras' bad arm over his neck to keep it dry, and they sit in the shallows up to their waists.

'I feel like a child,' he grumbles. Jason grins, cups water and dumps it over his hair. Pythagoras squawks, swiping water from his eyes. 'I am not helpless.' He scrubs at his tunic for a while. Jason prickles chilled. 'I have never heard you speak of your childhood before.' Jason rocks, a wave pushing at his ribs. Voice lilting humour: 'Does it take only mortal peril to prompt you?'

'Apparently.' Pythagoras is waving his good hand in the water, but the gore is caked on; Jason snags his arm and scrubs at it.

'I taught Diocles arithmetic,' Pythagoras says. Even in the dark, Jason's confusion must be clear, because he explains: 'The boatman who gave me free passage.' He pulls his arm free, still orange in the elbow crook. The other warms Jason's neck. 'He could not make change. I promised him tutoring in exchange for passage to Atlantis. It embarrasses him; we are barely pleasant with each other.' He tips a hand of water and watches it glitter like a meteor shower. 'Sorry,' he mutters. 'It is hardly an adventure, but you wondered earlier. I did not want to speak of it when he would hear.'

'You travelled via Thera?'

Pythagoras rises, water scattering white and loud, and turns for the dunes. Jason follows the craters of his footprints. 'I wandered many places between Samos and Atlantis.'

They settle at the edge of beach grasses, watching the quicksilver creep in. Pythagoras is unlikely to have regained an appetite; Jason's own stomach claims hunger then roils at the thought of eating. Clothes cling like fish skins.

He is about to suggest rest when Pythagoras says, 'You miss your home.' He is a tangled ball of arms and knees, pain-lines etched old.

Recognising the wish for distraction, Jason admits, 'Some of it. Little things. I can live without them. It's more…' On exhales, the sea brushes the first line of debris. 'I never ran out of food. Or feared for my life, really.' A dead jelly is lodged free, and he says, 'I never killed anyone.' This place has made him savage—he wishes to blame the place. Hallucinations may not be the best insights, but this is hardly subtle: couch and electricity and football, and he covered in blood.

'I find it hard to believe,' Pythagoras murmurs, 'that you ever lived a complacent life. You are far too good a man.'

'How can you call me that?' Jason says. Pythagoras, who cannot forgive himself an accidental death, and who might as well believe Jason popped fully-grown from the sea?

'You do not see your face, when you fight.' Whenever Jason is pulled from the ocean, he meets Pythagoras' gaze. 'It is more like a king than a criminal.'

He covers his mouth with his hand, muffling his confession: 'I would have killed Pelos.'

'And I stopped you.'

'Why? Where do you find your kindness?'

His spine pulls into a line, tunic glued to peaks. 'I have no kindness for Pelos,' he says, stiff with asperity. 'I thought only of sparing your soul a murder.'

Jason's lungs seize. The sea continues to breathe. Pythagoras tilts into his side; Jason notches his thumb between two low vertebrae, other hand sunk up to Circe's burn in sand, and words scald his throat: 'Sometimes—I forget myself, sometimes. I am not a king. There was a time when I couldn't imagine killing anyone. Who do I think I am?' The sea pulls itself up the sand. Once he'd been able to dismiss visions, but now Medea's words stick like the wet fabric behind his knees.

Pythagoras' words drag low with the surf of the sea. 'You defend anyone at any cost to yourself, body and soul. You are a great man. Trust this: you could come from the depths of Tartarus; I would still have suffered death tonight, and been privileged to have had a part in your life.'

Against the sin-waves of his spine, Jason's hand flares into a star. Pythagoras' shoulders, arched high in pain, fold. He adds, 'But while I am still here, I will remind your conscience of itself.' His eyes glint white when he turns to Jason, lips bowing into a moon. This close, he warms air. 'As you say, friends save each other.' The sea is as dark as the space between stars. Jason tips to rest his smile on the salty ridge of Pythagoras' right brow; they breathe in, and the air sears Jason's heart whiskey-hot.

End

* * *

AN: Hope you enjoyed! Comments appreciated.


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